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Uniformitarian Principle (linguistics)
In historical linguistics, the uniformitarian principle is the assumption that processes of language change that can be observed today also operated in the past. Peter Trudgill calls the uniformitarian principle "one of the fundamental bases of modern historical linguistics," which he characterizes, other things being equal, as the principle "that knowledge of processes that operated in the past can be inferred by observing ongoing processes in the present." It is the linguistic adaptation of a widespread principle in the sciences, there usually known as uniformitarianism. Application in linguistics In linguistics, Uriel Weinreich, William Labov and Marvin Herzog appear to have been the first to expressly elaborate, in the 1960s, on a hitherto tacit assumption of equivalent processes being at play in the present time as in the past. They did not do so without precedent, however, as historical and comparative linguistics, from the late 18th century on, seem to have adopted such process ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical linguistics involves several key areas of study, including the reconstruction of ancestral languages, the classification of languages into families, ( comparative linguistics) and the analysis of the cultural and social influences on language development. This field is grounded in the uniformitarian principle, which posits that the processes of language change observed today were also at work in the past, unless there is clear evidence to suggest otherwise. Historical linguists aim to describe and explain changes in individual languages, explore the history of speech communities, and study the origins and meanings of words ( etymology). Development Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century, having originally grown o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Change
Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of phonemes, or sound change; borrowing, in which features of a language or dialect are introduced or altered as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change, in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. Research on language change generally assumes the uniformitarian principle—the presumption that language changes in the past took place according to the same general principles as language changes visible in the present. Language change usually does not occur suddenly, but rather takes place via an extended per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Trudgill
Peter Trudgill, ( ; born 7 November 1943) is an English sociolinguist, academic and author. Biography Trudgill was born in Norwich, England, and grew up in the area of Thorpe St Andrew. He attended the City of Norwich School from 1955. Trudgill studied modern languages at King's College, Cambridge and obtained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1971. Before becoming professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Essex he taught in the Department of Linguistic Science at the University of Reading from 1970 to 1986. He was professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1993 to 1998, and then at the University of Fribourg, also in Switzerland, from which he retired in September 2005, and where he is now professor emeritus of English Linguistics. He is an honorary Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England. On 2 June 1995 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe., "''The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws is by no means unique to geology since it amounts to a warrant for inductive inference'' which, as Bacon showed nearly four hundred years ago, is ''the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown'' and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations." It refers to invariance in the metaphysical principles underpinning science, such as the constancy of cause and effect throughout space-time, but has also been used to describe spatiotemporal invariance of physical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uriel Weinreich
Uriel Weinreich (, ; May 23, 1926 – March 30, 1967) was a Jewish–American linguist. Life Uriel Weinreich was born in Wilno, Poland (since 1945, Vilnius, Lithuania), the first child of linguist Max Weinreich () and Regina Szabad, to a family that paternally hailed from Courland in Latvia and maternally came from a well-respected and established Wilno Jewish family. He served as a first lieutenant in the United States Army from 1944 to 1946. He earned his BA at Columbia University in 1948, during which time he was also elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his MA from Columbia in 1949 and his PhD in 1951. From 1951 to 1952 he was an editor and information specialist with the State Department at which point he joined Columbia University's faculty. There he specialized in Yiddish studies, sociolinguistics, and dialectology and was named the Atran Professor of Yiddish. In 1959, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He advocated the increased accep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Labov
William David Labov ( ; December4, 1927December17, 2024) was an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics, and "one of the most influential linguists of the 20th and 21st centuries". Labov was a professor in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and pursued research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology. He retired in 2015 but continued to publish research until his death in 2024. Early life and education Labov was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and raised in Rutherford, New Jersey, Rutherford, moving to Fort Lee, New Jersey, Fort Lee at age 12. According to Labov, the physician who delivered him was William Carlos Williams. He attended Harvard University, where he majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry. He graduated fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marvin Herzog
Marvin (Mikhl) I. Herzog (September 13, 1927 – June 28, 2013) was a Yiddish language Professor at Columbia University. Biography Herzog received his Ph.D. from Columbia under Uriel Weinreich. In 1967, he became the director, and then the editor-in-chief, of the Yiddish Atlas Project at Columbia University, which publishes, in conjunction with YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ..., ''The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry'' ( LCAAJ). Books *Herzog, Marvin I., ''The Yiddish Language in Northern Poland. Its Geography and History'', Indiana Univ., Bloomington, and The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1965. *Herzog, Marvin, et al. ed., YIVO, ''The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry'', 3 vols., Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, 1992–2000, . See also * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Paul
Hermann Otto Theodor Paul (August 7, 1846, Salbke – December 29, 1921, Munich) was a German philologist, linguist and lexicographer. Biography He studied at Berlin and Leipzig, and in 1874 became professor of German language and literature in the University of Freiburg. In 1893 he was appointed professor of German philology at the University of Munich. He was a prominent Neogrammarian. Works His main work, ''Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte'' (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1st ed. 1880; 3d ed. 1898), has been translated into English: Paul, Hermann 1970. ''Principles of the History of Language'', translated from 2nd edition by H. A. Strong (1888; retranslated with changes by Strong, Logeman, and Wheeler in 1891). College Park: McGroth Publishing Company, . According to Paul, sentences are the sum of their parts. They arise sequentially from individual associations, linked together in a linear form (1886. See also, Blumenthal, 1970). Wilhelm Wundt opposed this theory of sentences, arguing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Dwight Whitney
William Dwight Whitney (February 9, 1827June 7, 1894) was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was the first president of the American Philological Association and editor-in-chief of ''The Century Dictionary''. Life William Dwight Whitney was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on February 9, 1827. His father was Josiah Dwight Whitney (1786–1869) of the New England Dwight family. His mother was Sarah Williston (1800–1833) of Easthampton, Massachusetts. Whitney entered Williams College at fifteen, graduating in 1845. He continued studying and worked at a bank in Northampton for several years. He was at first interested in natural sciences, and assisted his older brother Josiah Whitney on a geological survey of the Lake Superior region in 1849, having charge of the botany, the barometrical observations and the accounts. On this ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Chambers (linguist)
J. K. "Jack" Chambers (born 12 July 1938 in Grimsby, Ontario, growing up in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Stoney Creek, Ontario) is a Canadian linguistics, linguist, and a well-known expert on Variation (linguistics), language variation and change, who has played an important role in research on Canadian English since the 1980s; he has coined the terms "Canadian raising, Canadian Raising" and "Canadian Dainty", the latter used for Canadian speech that mimics the British, popular till the mid-20th century. He has been a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto since receiving his a Doctor of Philosophy, Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in 1970. He has also been a visiting professor at many universities worldwide, including Hong Kong University, University of Szeged, Hungary, University of Kiel in Germany, Canterbury University in New Zealand, the University of Reading and the University of York in the UK. He is the author of the website Dialect Topography, which compiles i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pluricentric Language
A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, India, Singapore, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, and elsewhere. The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian. In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be elaborated to appear as separate languages, e.g. Malaysian and Indonesian, Hindi and Urdu, while Serbo-Croatian is in an earlier stage of that process. Examples of varying degrees of pluricentrism Arabic Pre-Islamic Arabic can be considered a polycentric language. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austrian German
Austrian German (), Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German (), Austrian High German (), or simply just Austrian (), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and South Tyrol. It has the highest prestige (sociolinguistics), sociolinguistic prestige locally, as it is the variation used in the media and for other formal situations. In less formal situations, Austrians use Bavarian language, Bavarian and Alemannic German, Alemannic dialects, which are traditionally spoken but rarely written in Austria. It has been standardized with the publishing of the ''Österreichisches Wörterbuch'' in 1951. History Austrian German has its beginning in the mid-18th century, when Empress Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II introduced compulsory education, compulsory schooling in 1774, and several reforms of administration in their multilingual Habsburg Empire. At the time, the written standard was ''Oberdeutsche Schreibsprache ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
